The Seasonal Metaphor

Somewhere in late spring to early summer is when we are meant to achieve greatness. Sometime when the sun is hot but the nights still offer respite, separation, and a time for reflection. It's no big conspiracy that the holidays of hope for better fall around the winter solstice, a time when the light, in that magical reversal, outweighs the dark for the very first time, but we often fail to point out that the holidays of social achievement -- the Fourth of July, Bastille Day, Golden Week, May Day, Juneteenth, Youth Day -- occur when the sky is a crisp blue and the sweat wipes away clean and accompanied with pride, unlike the whimpers heard during the dog days.

So, as a global society, where are we on the metaphorical calendar? Could be in clear-headed fall, full of relief that we made it through the grueling hot summer of recession and war against immovable foes called Terror, Drugs, and Communism -- a brief moment of rest after the harvesting of knowledge and wisdom and the error of our ways. Or is it dreary winter, still before the season of hope? Grey and immobilizing, our only defenses stoicism and willful ignorance as we accept that those in power -- Presidents, Prime Ministers, CEOs -- have our best interests and our freedom in mind. Or maybe we're in our own August, slow to action, full of emotion-laden decisions, absent of logic. Heated and in danger of an irreconcilable decision.

We should make it late spring. After the rains. When all is possible. Time to get things situated just right before the scorch arrives. Right before the flies decide to bite at our hides.

Will we prepared to quell their attacks one measly buzz at a time? Or will be unprepared and wait for them to swarm, only to flail violently and inaccurately? To shoot at and trip over our own feet. To bring the innocents around us down too.

When it's all said and done, it's up to us to decide the season, and to flavor it accordingly. Each day is a new world. Each moment a chance to make that world perfect, to storm the castle, to flip the coin, to sand the edges, to spike the DNA with medicine of rich compassion as if it were the punch at an 1st Estate ball.

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